Getting Out of Jail After Dark Can Be Dangerous--and Sometimes Deadly
Getting Out of Jail After Dark Can Be Dangerous—and Sometimes Deadly
Nighttime is the worst possible time to release inmates. So why do so many jails do it?
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It’s not unusual for jails large and small to release inmates after dark or in the early hours of the morning. For many people released before daybreak, the hours that follow are difficult, dangerous, and sometimes deadly. Many hit the streets without phones, money, a ride, or knowledge of local public transportation, if it’s still running. They may be struggling with addiction or mental health issues; some have no place to go. In Los Angeles, men and women let out at night often find their way to nearby Skid Row. Chicago’s Cook County Jail releases people into a dangerous neighborhood after dark. (Discharged inmates often head to a local Popeyes for sanctuary.) “It’s hard to think of a more counterproductive, self-defeating measure if we want people to succeed when they get out of jail than releasing them in the middle of the night,” says David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s prison project.
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Eight months before I encountered Leah, Jessica St. Louis was released from Santa Rita at 1:25 a.m. on a Saturday. The 26-year-old had been picked up on minor charges before, and almost every time she was set free, “she ends up at our place,” says Benita Turner, her foster mother. Turner lives 20 minutes from the jail, but on the morning of July 28, 2018, neither St. Louis nor the jail called her. St. Louis set off alone with nothing but a transit ticket issued by the jail. The trains wouldn’t start running for several hours. She was found outside the station before daybreak, dead from an overdose of heroin laced with fentanyl, according to the county coroner’s office.
Turner still has questions about how her foster daughter died—where she found drugs in the early morning or got the money to pay for them. “We will never know the answer to that,” says Sergeant Ray Kelly, the spokesperson for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, which runs Santa Rita Jail. Studies show that inmates’ risk of dying is highest in the two weeks following release from jail or prison; overdoses are the most frequent cause of death. “We’ve had people leave jail and then get home and go back on drugs and overdose and die, I’m sure,” Kelly says. (The jail does hand out naloxone, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses, but only to inmates with a prescription.) If Santa Rita had discharged St. Louis at 7 a.m., would it have changed anything? “I don’t know that the hour of the night would have made a difference,” Kelly says.
Santa Rita usually lets out 50 to 100 inmates between 4:30 p.m. and 4:30 a.m. every day. Some have just posted bail. A few have been arrested late in the day for a misdemeanor like public drunkenness and let go with a citation. Those who have received a release order from a judge earlier in the day may wait in holding cells for hours while jail employees confirm their release and handle their paperwork. The process freezes three times a day during head count. Ditto if there’s a fight or other emergency.
https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2019/07/left-in-the-dark/
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